Edit wiki/solo-vs-bad-team.md — Rookie Mistakes & Gotchas

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# solo > bad team

## what happened

solo tbh very strong. benefits: no comms issues, no dependency issues, no presentation disagreements, when you win you actually feel it.

## why it's a gotcha

there's pressure to team up at hackathons. "you need a team to win" is conventional wisdom. but a bad team is actively worse than solo — you spend more time coordinating than building, you make compromises that make the project worse, and if things go wrong, it feels worse because you gave up control.

## the fix

if you don't find a team you're genuinely excited about, go solo. a focused solo builder who ships a working demo beats a dysfunctional team every time. the best teams are small and aligned; the worst teams are big and confused. what makes a team bad? [[teams-without-shared-understanding|no shared understanding]], [[unclear-roles|role confusion]], [[personality-mismatch-under-pressure|personality clashes under pressure]], being [[all-coders-no-communicator|all coders with no communicator]]. the solution is to [[figure-out-what-you-want-before-partners|find the right team]] or go alone.